Bamboogie 2015

Very enjoyable! I wanted to add my voice here to even out some of the other reviews. I found the first 4 steeps to be incredibly rich and complex, with prominent notes of honey, berries, and pastries. After steep 4, the sweetness dropped off and I did notice the “green pepper” note that other reviews talked about, although I didn’t mind it. It looks like the other reviews were from 3+ years ago, so this tea seems to have improved with age!

1st (very short) steep was interesting, smelled sweet and floral/green, more like smelling a vegetable garden than say, a rose garden. The sweetness is what I tasted first, followed by bitterness.

2nd steep is where things got weird for me. Still has a little sweetness, but the bitterness is more pronounced. Couldn’t figure out how to describe it until I saw other people here saying “green pepper.” That’s it, it’s vegetables with a kick. Combined with that initial slightly-floral sweetness, it makes me think habanero minus the heat. Not sure how I feel about this as sort of flavor as tea.

With some trepidation, made a third cup. Shorter steep than I did for the second cup. Still a little bitter, but significantly less peppery. Unfortunately less sweet too, but what can you do…Just a touch of minerality in there also that I hadn’t noticed before.

I could probably make another cup, but I’m not sure I’m inclined to. Overall a very educational experience, if mostly in discovering that I do not enjoy this sort of tea. On the plus side, it’s not a one-note tea. And for a tea to wake me up to start the day, it definitely did the trick.

Got an aroma of honey and mainly tasted bitterness with a little bit of sweetness. Mainly bitter

cream water like, really light color, stronger flavor at second time, vegetable taste. bitter and bitter,m but the color doesn’t change it too much

2015 harvest
Aroma: Green pepper
Color: light yellow green
First steep: stringent, edamame
Second steep: vegetable
Third steep: hard

Starts off sweet, not too much bitter or astringent for a young sheng at all despite the description. Very drinkable with some nice hay, fragrant body, and a hint of capsicum of some sort. Nice way to start your day, it is a light chugger that didn’t do much amazing for me, but doesn’t do you any wrong either and has a nice, gently uplifting feeling to it. Very clean sort of taste as well, if that’s your thing.

Got a sample of this one from the Puer TTB!!

The leaf smelled slightly smoky when rinsed, with some fruity notes as well. The first two steeps were a tad bitter, with some subdued smoky notes and peachy fruitiness. To me, the taste started to go a little in the mineral-y direction for the next few steeps, with a peachy aftertaste. The remaining ~6 steeps had a light hay flavor with a peach and sometimes honey sweet aftertaste. This one was pretty good. I think the session was slightly muddled by the water I was using, so probably not as good as it could have been. Too bad I only had enough for one session!

Thanks JakeB! Sadly, this is another Mandala I probably shouldn’t be Western steeping. I thought this might have some kick or something to it, with the ‘bamboogie’ name (I figured the name had something to do with music, and looking at Mandala’s description, I was right)… but to me, this just tasted like raw pu-erh. I like my raw pu-erh to have a little something extra to them, so that I really want to steep them over other teas, including ripe pu-erh. But this is just raw pu-erh. Probably not steeping it ideal. At least it didn’t get bitter, and that is nice enough for a raw pu-erh to me! :D This one isn’t my jam… on to the sale list it goes.
Steep #1 // 20 minutes after boiling // rinse // 30 second steep
Steep #2 // 20 minutes after boiling // 40 second steep

Trying to drink down my samples lately. Tried this one today. I didn’t do that many infusions but what I had was okay. There wasn’t much bitterness. It had a creamy mouth feel to it. Not much fruitiness/apricot which I like in my shengs. This is not one I would go and buy. Even though it was a decent cup of tea , it just wasn’t the best.

Puerh Tea TTB. This is a fairly nice raw. It was bitter at first but got sweeter. Not sure if I would call it apricoty though. It was good. Had some color to the infusions once it got started. No qi to speak of. Enjoyable to drink.

I steeped this eight times in a 120ml gaiwan with 7.2g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec. The tea was not finished at eight steeps but I want to drink something else.